The Successor
by cein
Summary: Set after Twilight. Chapter 6. Tony has second thoughts, but what made him change his mind?
1. Jethro Gibbs

Title:Successor Author: Ceindreadh Email: Website: n/a Permission to archive: Yes Fandom(s): NCIS Genre (general, hetero or slash) Gen Pairing/Characters: n/a Rating: FRT 13 Summary: Post fic to Twilight. Life goes on.  
Warnings: None Disclaimer. I don't own the NCIS characters, I'm only borrowing them, and I promise to return them in minty fresh condition when I'm finished.

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It was six months later when shewalked into my life. 

Six months after Special Agent Kate Todd had died in the line of duty. Hah, line of duty. She hadn't been killed 'in the line of duty'. She had been killed because she was my colleague, somebody I cared about. Her death hadn't been a result of her actions as an agent, it had been her proximity to me that had killed her.

She had been murdered plain and simple by a cold-blooded cowardly assassin named Ari. He hadn't even had the balls to kill her face to face. No, that bastard had shot her from a distance, giving her no chance whatsoever to defend herself, and every day I woke up and promised myself that he was going to pay. 

But Ari had proved to be just as elusive as ever, and in the meantime, life went on. Director Morrow told me that we didn't have the resources for personal vendettas. Ari would remain on our wanted lists, but without any new information coming in, we had no way of finding him. So we went back to our jobs, back to solving murders, tracking down terrorists, but never the one we wanted.

It was two weeks after Kate's death...Kate's murder that the first replacement arrived. Not that anybody could ever take her place, but boy they tried. That first one was on some sort of investigative exchange program from Australia. She lasted about three weeks before transferring to another office. I'm not saying I was a total bastard to her, and I'm definitely not saying that she deserved any of the shit I threw at her. She was a good agent, a competent investigator, could shoot like Annie Oakley and more than hold her own in a fight. Heck, she even managed to keep Tony on a short rein. But she had one major flaw that couldn't be cured...she wasn't Kate.

And so she left, and so did all the others, both male and female agents that they tried to palm off on me as a replacement. Some lasted a few days, others only a few hours. One showed up at 9am, got sent for my coffee at eleven and never returned. DiNozzo joked that she'd transferred to the Arctic rather than come back, but I knew he was lying...we don't have any agents stationed up there. The longest that anybody lasted was this one kid that stuck it out with us for two weeks. Of course that was probably because for ten days of those two weeks DiNozzo and I were investigating a case in Gitmo and he'd been stuck in the office on his own until we came back.

It became a joke with DiNozzo. We'd get a new recruit and he would instantly predict how long it would be before I scared them off. It was almost uncanny how accurate he could be, although I had a sneaking suspicion that if one of the probies looked like lasting longer than he had predicted, that Tony was not above throwing a little scare into them himself to help them on their way.

Why did I do it? It was for their own good. Kate had died because she was one of my team...because she was close to me and because Ari knew how much it would hurt me to lose her. I was under no illusions that Ari's aim had been off and he had hit Kate by accident. He had hit the target that he had intended to hit because he knew it'd hurt me worse to watch one of my team die. 

So Kate was dead because she was on my team and that day I swore that it would never happen again. There was no sure way that I could guarantee the safety of anyone on my team, so I did the next best thing and made sure that there wasn't anybody on my team to be in danger.

McGee was easy to get rid of. There was always some sort of computer related project going on that his I.T. skills would be ideally suited for. A couple of weeks after Kate's death and he'd been offered a new posting. I couldn't understand half the words in the job description, but McGee was plenty qualified and it was a promotion and it got him transferred out of the line of fire. 

DiNozzo wasn't as easy to get rid of and God knows I tried my best. I pulled all the strings I could to get him another posting, but somehow for one reason or another no matter how good an offer Tony was given, it was never enough to persuade him to transfer. 

He called me on it a month or so later. "I know what you're doing, Boss," he told me. "You want to fix it so the next time Ari takes a potshot at you that there'll be nobody about to get in the way. Well it's not gonna work, I'm not going anywhere."

"You'll go quickly enough if I fire you," I snapped back at him. He looked a bit taken aback. And I admit that it wasn't the first time it had crossed my mind. But I couldn't do it to him. Tony was a good agent and it wouldn't have been fair to screw up his career with a black mark like that on his resume. On the other hand, better that than see him lying on the ground in front of me with his brains blown out.

"Boss, look you need somebody around to watch your back, right? Right boss?" I ignored him at first, but I had to admit that he was right. Not to his face of course. But I stopped trying to get him transferred out and concentrated my efforts on making sure that nobody else transferred in to the danger zone. DiNozzo, once he'd figured out what was going on, was just as willing to play the part of the partner from hell in order to ensure that the newbies didn't hang around. 

Until she showed up. I heard her before I saw her, she'd stopped at DiNozzo's desk and said she was supposed to report to Special Agent Gibbs...two 'B's. She even had my name written on a bit of paper so as not to forget it. 

So Tony pointed her in my direction and I gave her my usual spiel about how we didn't need a new agent and she could just report back and get a new assignment. I went back to what I was doing, only to look up a few minutes later to see her still standing there.

"I was told to report here," she said again. "If you don't want me here then fine, but you're going to have to cut the orders for me."

She must have noticed how exasperated I was getting because she quickly added, "Look, I know that I'm the latest in a long list of agents who've come and gone in the last few months, so I'm not gonna take it personally if you want me to take a hike. But this is my first time in DC for while and I'd kinda like to stick around for a few days, so how about I sit in a corner for a while and then at the end of the week if you still want to transfer me out then at least it won't look so bad on my file, okay?"

If I'd had less coffee that day then I'd probably have told her to take a hike but four cups in and I was feeling mellow - or at least as mellow as I get - so I said she could stick around...but not at Kate's desk. 

I glanced over at her once or twice as she sat at McGee's old desk. Her file was on the screen in front of me. Four years in NCIS, a few commendations on her file, by all accounts a model agent. But still not Kate. And to me all she was was just another potential victim for Ari or anybody else trying to get to me. So I figured I'd send her packing at the end of the week. Heck, it might get Morrow off my back if I at least occasionally appeared to give the newbies a chance. 

Of course life would have been a lot simpler if I'd kept to that resolve. But after a few hours of tidying paperclips on the desk she asked me if she could do something to make herself useful around the place, so I dumped a bundle of phone records on the desk and told her to go through them and find any calls between about a dozen different numbers. And when she'd sorted through that there was another stack of records to go through and by the end of the day she'd cleared a bunch of paper trails that would have taken DiNozzo all day and half the night, and she'd managed to prove that our prime suspect in a robbery had a cast iron alibi. 

That in itself was almost enough to make me get rid of her on the spot, but I'd promised her a week, so I did the next best thing. I told Tony to take her to lunch the next day. Hey, I said I'd give her a week. If she couldn't last that long then that was her problem. 

Only thing was, it didn't work. She and DiNozzo came back from their lunch break laughing over a shared joke and as soon as she took a bathroom break DiNozzo was at my desk in a flash, his face lit up like a kid with a stray puppy. "Can we keep her, Boss? Please, please? She's fun and she's smart and you wouldn't believe half the cases she's worked."

"You want her to stick around?" My voice was even as I looked him in the eye.

"Well yeah Boss. I mean, no disrespect but she's a heck of a lot easier on the eyes than you are."

I shrugged. "Well if you really like her that much. And I'm sure you won't mind getting her blood on your face next time Ari shows up." I knew from the look on Tony's face that I'd gone too far. "Shit," I swore under my breath. "Look, Tony, I didn't mean that, okay? She's a good kid and a good agent, and in other circumstances I wouldn't mind having her on the team. But it's just too dangerous. I don't want to have to sit through another memorial service for somebody who got in the way. I don't want to have to tell another family that their daughter isn't coming back because she was working on my team. She's leaving at the end of the week, is that clear?"

"Crystal clear, Boss," said Tony, in a subdued voice. Head down he started to head back to his desk and then turned back to me. "You know, Kate would have hated this. She'd have hated the thought that her death was screwing you up so badly that you were pushing everybody away. Shit, she'd be the first person to tell you that it's all part of the job we do. We have to move on Boss, we can't keep looking over our shoulders just in case somebody's got it in for us. We have to get on with our lives. Kate would have wanted that." He walked away again and this time didn't look back.

The truth hurts and I spent half the night working away at my boat and trying to ignore what DiNozzo had said. But I couldn't forget it for the simple reason that he was right. I prided myself on being able to tell a good Agent from a mediocre one within five minutes of working with them. In any other situation I would have grabbed at the chance to add her to my team. Heck, that's how I'd picked up Kate. But how could I do it again, knowing that I might as well paint a bulls eye on her forehead. 

I watched her the next day. We were all working late and she'd ordered take out and I watched as DiNozzo tried to steal a French fry from her plate only to get a plastic fork to the back of his hand. It was the sort of trick he'd have tried on Kate, only Kate would have probably just yelled at him to keep his hands off her food and then DiNozzo would have teased her about something or other. And it was like Kate was whispering in my ear, telling me to take a chance, that we all have to move on.

So on the Friday when she was packing up her things I told her that she could stay to finish up the case she'd been helping us on. And after that case was another and then another, and six months after that she was still there. 

And while I never quite shook the feeling that agents on my team might as well wear a target on their backs, I did move past it. Probably helped by the fact that we eventually tracked down Ari and as luck would have it, he resisted arrest. Kate would have been proud of the fact that I actually did try to take him alive, and it really was a good shoot. It was probably appropriate that Kate's successor was the one whose bullet was the actual fatal one. Although how Ducky was able to tell from all the bullets which one had killed Ari, was anybody's guess. Nobody felt like arguing the point. Instead the whole team went out and drank a toast to Kate's memory. 

So life went on in NCIS. Kate hadn't been the first agent to die on my watch and I knew she wouldn't be the last. Losing an agent was never going to get any easier but that was part of the job. And having a team around me that I could trust was always going to make the job a lot easier.

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The End 


	2. Tony DiNozzo

Title:Successor part 2 Author: Ceindreadh Email: Website: n/a Permission to archive: Yes Fandom(s): NCIS Genre (general, hetero or slash) Gen Pairing/Characters: n/a Rating: FRT 13 Summary: Post fic to Twilight. Life goes on.  
Warnings: None Disclaimer. I don't own the NCIS characters, I'm only borrowing them, and I promise to return them in minty fresh condition when I'm finished.  
Notes. I originally intended Sucessor to be a one off but then I felt Tony needed to have his say as well.

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Successor - part 02 (Tony's POV)

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I'd like to be able to say from the start that I knew how special Elizabeth was going to be. I mean, it's always the thing you hear people say "Oh I could tell from the moment I met them" whatever. Like they've got some sort of sixth sense about people when in reality most of them are faking it. So yeah, when I first met Elizabeth, I didn't think anything other than here was yet another newbie to scare away. Well okay, I was also thinking about how much I could annoy her by calling her Liz, or Lizzie, or Beth or Betty or whatever. But then I remembered that she wasn't going to be hanging around long enough for any of that.

Now don't get me wrong, I didn't agree with Gibbs's attitude. I know he felt that hanging round him was way too dangerous, but somehow I didn't think Ari was going to be hanging around just waiting to pick us off one by one. That bastard probably had bigger fish to fry. But Gibbs was adamant about wanting to keep as few people as possible in the line of fire, so I went along with him. Mainly because I figured if I argued too much then Gibbs would have second thoughts about keeping me around. And while I didn't figure Ari was going to come after him again, I still felt that somebody needed to watch Gibbs's back. 

So I played along with his little game. I watched as he systematically made sure that nobody wanted to work with him for longer than a week, and yes, I sometimes lent a helping hand to speed the newbie's on their way. I'm not especially proud of the way I treated some of them. But I kept reminding myself that it was for their own good, right?

We'd been without a newbie for a few weeks now and I was starting to think that maybe they'd got the hint upstairs. Or maybe they'd just run out of agents to assign to Gibbs team. I know I'd overheard a few people swearing that they'd quit rather than work with Gibbs. 

So when Elizabeth showed up, I thought nothing of it. Just another newbie to torment for a few days. It was good though, because I'd been getting a bit bored the last few weeks. Life was always more interesting with somebody around to tease. I caught myself looking over at Kate's empty desk and a pang of regret hit me. Six months after Ari had murdered her and I still missed her. Oh I'd gone through all the stages of grief, anger, denial, whatever, and was now firmly settled in acceptance. But it still sucked. Kate should have been here giving newbies a hard time just like I was. She should have been there for me to annoy and tease. It wasn't right that the last memory I had of her was of her lying on that rooftop blood pooling around her. It wasn't right that every time I caught the scent of fresh blood all I could think about was Kate and how I'd worn her blood on my face.

The first scene we'd worked after Kate's death made me sick...literally. It hadn't been an excessively gory one. Single gunshot wound, but the guy had bled...a lot. And when I walked in and caught the scent of the blood, for a minute I was back on the rooftop watching Kate's body. I guess I was lucky...I managed to make it outside of the room before throwing up, and the taste of vomit in my mouth sort of cancelled out the smell of blood. But since then, any time I've gone near a crime scene that there's gonna be blood at, I make sure I've got a jar of vapo rub or something to stop me smelling it. Ducky taught me that little trick the first time I stood in on an autopsy he was doing. The guy had been dead in the water for several days before ending up on Ducky's table and the smell was something you wouldn't believe. So Ducky let me in on a mortician's secret, mainly to stop me puking all over his nice clean Autopsy.

But anyway, where was I...vapo rub, blood, Kate. Oh yeah, Elizabeth's first day. Well like I said, there was nothing special about her. I mean, she looked nice enough, but there wasn't really anything about her that would make her stand out in a crowd. Suppose that's no harm when you're in N.C.I.S. But anyway, she walked up to my desk and said that she was looking for Special Agent Gibbs. And then she looked a bit of paper and added "With two B's" and she sort of smiled at me and I got the impression that she knew exactly what the second B was supposed to stand for. So I smiled back at her. Now that I think of it, that probably wasn't the smartest thing to do, given that I was supposed to be scaring her off. But I figured that hey, she'd made me smile with that line so I could at least be nice to her...for her first day anyway. Besides, odds were she wouldn't be coming back for a second day.

So I directed her over to Gibbs's desk where her 'interview' with him went pretty much as I'd expected it would. Except for the part about her convincing him to give her a week. I thought she'd have been out the door five minutes later. Guess first impressions aren't all they're cracked up to be.

Anyway, she was sitting at McGee's old desk for the day. You know I really missed McGee those first few weeks. I know the Probie had himself a hot new job doing computer techy stuff and I know that Gibbs was the one who'd set him up for it. But I missed the little guy. It was fun having somebody around who looked up to me like he did. Maybe I should lean on Gibbs a bit, persuade him to keep one of the newbies around for longer than a week...and maybe I should just swat myself on the head, save him the trouble.

So Elizabeth was left to do some paperwork while Gibbs and I got on with the real investigative stuff, only when we got back to the office that evening, she waved a bunch of notes at us excitedly and told us she'd found something good. Course it turned out that she'd managed to clear the guy who we'd figured to be the main man for a bunch of robberies we were investigating. I could tell that Gibbs wasn't too happy about having wasted so many hours building a case against him only to have it pulled out from under us. But he didn't act pissed. He even muttered "Good work" under his breath. But I knew he was annoyed. Why else would he have ordered me to take her to lunch the next day and made it clear to me that it wasn't supposed to be a chance to make friends.

I knew what he meant. He wanted me to be as annoying and obnoxious and behave as much like a jerk as possible so Elizabeth wouldn't even last the week. It wasn't because he was pissed at her, Gibbs wasn't that petty and he always approved of work that was well done, but I knew that he didn't want Elizabeth to turn out to be a good worker because that'd be one less excuse he could use to get rid of her. So from his point of view if she couldn't handle the DiNozzo charm that would be one way of getting her out of the picture and out of harms way. So all I had to do was scare her off. Easy, right?

And I was gonna to do that, honest. But we sort of got to talking and she started telling me about some of the cases she'd done, and I filled her in on some of my cases and I ended up talking about Kate for the first time in months.

Not that I hadn't thought about Kate. I had...a lot...but there were so few people around that I could talk to about her without opening up old wounds. Gibbs never mentioned Kate to me and I knew better than to bring up the subject with him. Ducky would talk for hours about her, but every time he mentioned her name it was like somebody had stuck a knife in his guts. And Abby...she had draped a black cloth over Kate's desk as soon as she'd heard the news. Wouldn't let anybody touch it until after the funeral. And even now, six months later, she kept changing the subject whenever Kate's name came up. We were all still hurting, and somehow it was a relief to be able to talk to somebody about Kate who wasn't going to get angry or upset or withdrawn when her name was mentioned.

"You'd have liked Kate," I said, as I chewed on a toothpick. "She didn't take any crap from anybody. She'd have stood up to Gibbs the same way you did yesterday. Very brave of you, might I say. Most people tend to quake in their boots when Gibbs glares at them like he did you."

She grinned at me and said "Well it's easy to be brave when you've got nothing to lose. The way I figured it, the worst that was going to happen was that Gibbs would send me packing, right? But everybody knows he's been going through new agents like wildfire. So there wouldn't be any blame on me for only lasting a day. Everybody would just put it down to Gibbs being Gibbs." She took a swig from her coffee. "And if I last the week then it'll look good that I was able to hang on that long. It's a win win situation for me."

I belatedly remembered that I was supposed to be acting like a jerk, so I reached over to try and snag the last of her fries, only to get rapped on the knuckles with her fork. She grinned at me even as she told me that the next time I tried that it wouldn't be the flat edge of the fork she'd use. 

I think that was the moment when I knew I wanted her on the team. Let's face it, I was fed up with the revolving door of agents we'd had in the last few months. I wanted a bit of stability in the team. And if I'm being honest, I wanted somebody on the team to watch both mine and Gibbs's backs. 

So the first opportunity I got, I told Gibbs I thought we should let her stick around. I mean, I don't mind the extra workload that came with just the two of us working a case, but there was no sense in working that hard if we didn't have to. Plus I liked Elizabeth. She was fun to talk to, she was smart. But as Gibbs pointed out, she was also a target. I knew in my heart that Gibbs was just trying to look out for her safety, but we were NCIS agents. Danger was part of the job. Of course I didn't know then that one day I'd understand exactly where he was coming from.

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To be continued

ceindreadh 


	3. Dr Donald 'Ducky' Mallard

Title:Successor part 3 Author: Ceindreadh Email: Website: n/a Permission to archive: Yes Fandom(s): NCIS Genre (general, hetero or slash) Gen Pairing/Characters: n/a Rating: FRT 13 Summary: Post fic to Twilight. Life goes on.  
Warnings: None Disclaimer. I don't own the NCIS characters, I'm only borrowing them, and I promise to return them in minty fresh condition when I'm finished. 

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Successor - part 03 (Ducky's POV)

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My first proper meeting with Elizabeth took place in Autopsy, as did most of my meetings with new people. Not, I hasten to add, that she was availing of my professional services, thank goodness. But she showed up in Autopsy one afternoon, as I was midway through cutting open a Lieutenant.

The young man in question had been found by the side of the road with some rather curious indentations in his chest. It wasn't until I looked at some of the photos of the Lieutenant that I realized where I'd seen those types of indentations before. It was many many years ago when I was in practice in England and a young man, a stable hand had been found dead in one of the loose boxes. Everybody had suspected it was murder, but the bruises on his chest proved to be an exact match for the horseshoes worn by one of the more highly-strung mares in the stables. I had the grooms check the mare's shoes, and sure enough there were traces of fibers found in her shoes. Not that we had the technology to match them to the shirt the stable hand was wearing at the time, but it was enough for the Coroner to record a verdict of accidental death. Of course what nobody knew until later, much later, was that the stable hands wife had been stepping out with the owner of the highly-strung mare. Unfortunately by the time their involvement with each other had been revealed, the case had been closed and the local constabulary showed no inclination to reopen it. What a grieving widow got up to with the lord of the manor was nobody's business but their own I was told in no uncertain terms. And of course I had no proof that anything untoward had taken place. In fact it was equally likely that the stable hand, having gotten wind of his wife's infidelity had been engaged in some nefarious activities of his own. In any event, the lord and the widow came to a bad end as well. Tragic really, but rather ironic in its own way...but where was I...ah yes, the young Lieutenant Schaeffer.

"So, Lieutenant Schaeffer," I said, as I leaned over the body on my Autopsy table. "What can you tell me about the horse that caused all this damage to you."

"Do they ever answer you?" I had heard the door to Autopsy open a few seconds earlier, so having a question addressed to me wasn't a surprise.

"Not directly," I replied, while still concentrating on Lieutenant Schaefer's mid section. "But nonetheless they do almost invariably provide the answers to most of my questions. Life would be considerably easier however, if they were able to actually speak to me." I turned away from Lieutenant Schaefer and cast my attention towards my visitor. I recognized her immediately. Rumor and gossip travels fast through N.C.I.S. and I was aware that Gibbs had been landed with an agent who had already lasted a week without being sent packing. What with one thing and another, I hadn't made her acquaintance as yet. Jethro had had a run of cases that hadn't required the services of an M.E. and as such I had had no excuse to meet the young lady for myself.

She was most unlike Caitlin in appearance. That was a relief to start with. Hardly a day went past without my seeing somebody in the street and having to catch my breath because they looked or sounded or even simply walked like Kate did. It's not an uncommon phenomenon I know, but it remains a most disconcerting, and sometimes a most distressing experience for all concerned.

The first time, as I recall, it was only a few days after poor Kate's funeral. There had been a young woman walking across the street from me, and I could have sworn it was her. The fact that I had performed Kate's autopsy the week before and had my hands inside her skull as I tried to ascertain the track of the bullet that that murdering bastard Ari had killed her with, didn't matter to me. I was convinced that there had been some terrible mix up. It was fortunate that Jethro had been with me at the time that I saw Kate's doppelganger across the road. As it was, I had stepped off the pavement without thinking and it was only his quick reactions that dragged me out of the path of an oncoming car and prevented me from ending up on my own autopsy table.

Jethro, poor lad, was quite furious with me. He yelled at me about how he had just buried one member of his team and the last thing he wanted was to have to give another eulogy. I probably should have told him that that wouldn't be necessary, as I had already made arrangements to will my body to medical science. After all, having worked on so many corpses during my career, I feel it only appropriate that I allow myself to be accorded the same treatment. But then of course there would probably still be a memorial service, and of course it would be only right to allow Jethro to alleviate any grief he might feel by saying a few words. Some people feel that by participating in the funerals or memorials for the dead can provide some sense of closure. But in Kate's case that hadn't been so. I knew that I for one would feel no closure whatsoever until Ari was stretched out on my Autopsy table and I with my bone saw in hand. And if he were dead at the time, well, so much the better.

I make no claim to psychic ability; that would be more in Abigail's field. So when I met Elizabeth, I had no idea that she would be instrumental in bringing some closure not only to me, but also to others. All I knew was that I was happy to have had the chance to make her acquaintance before Gibbs got a chance to scare her away.

I suppose that one thing to be said for Gibbs attitude was that at least I was getting to meet a wide range of people in a short space of time, even if our acquaintance was destined to be brief...at least in some cases. For instance, there was that young lady from Norfolk who proved quite interested in keeping up contact even after Gibbs had scared her off. Unfortunately her next posting proved to be a considerable distance away and we were unable to continue our brief association, much to my disappointment...but where was I. Ah yes, young Elizabeth.

"You must be the new Special Agent on Gibbs team," I said, smiling at her as I left Lieutenant Schaeffer to his own devices for the time being. "I'm Doctor Mallard."

"Pleased to meet you, Doctor Mallard. Special Agent Elizabeth Faulkner." She held out her hand to shake mine, but I could see her hesitate as she saw the blood on the gloves I was wearing.

"Please, call me Ducky," I said, as I removed my gloves. "Everybody else does."

"Ducky," she said. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt your work."

"It's always a pleasure to be interrupted by an attractive woman."

"Well if I see one then I'll be sure to send her along."

"And what may I do for you, Elizabeth?" I asked as I escorted her away from the table. "An autopsy report, some details regarding time or cause of death? Or perhaps a quick spot of lunch."

"I've already eaten thanks," she said with a quick smile. "Although looking at your latest guest, I'm half wishing I hadn't. But actually I came here by mistake. I think I pressed the wrong button in the elevator, so I thought I'd better find somebody and get my bearings before I got hopelessly lost. I was actually heading for the forensics lab to speak to Abby."

"Ah yes, Abby's lab is directly above mine. Just take the lift back up one floor." I would have directed her to follow the loud music, but sad to say, since Kate's death, Abby hadn't been playing her music quite as loudly as she used to. Now that I come to think about it, Abby had changed a lot in the months since Kate's death. Her normal perky demeanor had become quite subdued. And if Jethro had been hard on Kate's replacements, well that was nothing to the treatment that Abby had meted out to them. Oh she never let it affect her work or the cases that were investigated. All her forensic work was as meticulous as ever, but whereas once one could walk into her laboratory and be assured of finding something weird and wonderful and non-forensic related to amuse oneself with, now it was all business. I don't think she even realized she was doing it. But I had noticed, and I missed the old Abby, just as much as I missed Kate.

Elizabeth seemed rather hesitant to leave, and loath though I was to admit it, I was sure that it wasn't simply my pleasant company that kept her lingering. When I asked her if anything was the matter, she confided in me that she wasn't sure that Abby liked her all that much, "I know I've only met her once before, but I really felt that she'd rather I wasn't there."

"My dear child, I'm afraid it's nothing personal. But dear Abigail was a close friend to Caitlin Todd, and I'm afraid that anybody who she sees as taking her place is bound to get short shrift from her." I patted Elizabeth reassuringly on the shoulder, sighing heavily as I did so. I knew how Abby felt. I had felt the same way for the first few months after Kate's shocking death, resenting the living for simply being alive when Kate was dead.

"She was really that special?" Elizabeth's voice broke through my reverie.

"Yes my dear, she was."

I'm afraid that Elizabeth didn't seem entirely happy at the prospect of having to live up to such a paragon as Kate had been. But I reassured her as best as I could that it would only be a matter of time before she was accepted as an agent in her own right and not just as a temporary, soon to be replaced, substitute for Kate. After all, the fact that she was still there after a week was surely a good sign, as well as the rumor I'd heard that Tony had actually stood up to Gibbs and argued in favor of keeping her.

So I waved her away that morning and said a silent prayer that I would never open a body bag and see her face staring up at me. It was a prayer that I made regularly when I had contact with the NCIS agents who had become my friends and family throughout the years. Sadly, all too often that prayer wasn't answered. Only time could tell.

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To be continued

Ceindreadh


	4. Abby Sciuto

Title:Successor part 4 Author: Ceindreadh Email: Website: n/a Permission to archive: Yes Fandom(s): NCIS Genre (general, hetero or slash) Gen Pairing/Characters: n/a Rating: FRT 13 Summary: Post fic to Twilight. Life goes on.  
Warnings: None Disclaimer. I don't own the NCIS characters, I'm only borrowing them, and I promise to return them in minty fresh condition when I'm finished. Elizabeth is my own creation.

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Successor - part 03 (Abby's POV)

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I'll be honest; I hated Elizabeth on sight. 

She was in M-Tac talking with Tony, no, make that laughing with Tony when I first saw her. And I just felt, how dare she be there trying to weasel her way into everybody's affections like that. Not that it was difficult to get DiNozzo's attention. Being female and not ugly was always a good start. But it made my blood boil to see her there looking as if she belonged. 

I know now it wasn't her fault. She was just there doing her job trying to be part of the team she was assigned to, but back then, six months after Kate's death, I was still in the phase of grieving where I resented people for living when Kate was dead. Kate had been one of my closest friends and nobody could take her place, not as a friend, not as a co-worker. 

Although Gibbs didn't know it, he had an ally in me when it came to scaring off potential replacements for Kate. Even though our motives were different, we shared a common goal. He didn't want anybody else to get hurt because of him. I just didn't want anybody to take Kate's place. So whenever a new recruit showed up in my lab I went into full creepy Goth mode to freak them out. Sometimes it worked.

Tony once asked me how do Goth's mourn. "I mean, you're already there with the whole gloom and doom and black clothes and stuff, so what happens when you're in mourning? Do you dress up in bright colors?" This was before Kate's death; DiNozzo may not always think before he speaks, but he wasn't that tactless. It had been in the hospital after they'd given him the all clear from the Y-Pestis. He'd been a little morbid at the time, wondering how people would have reacted had he not survived. I told him the truth; that we'd all have been devastated to lose him. Then he went on about how he hoped we'd have all turned out in our best clothes for his funeral. I teased him about his plan to wear only boxer shorts in his coffin, just to give the ladies a thrill during the wake. Little did either of us know that only a few weeks later we'd be talking about funerals for real.

Anyway, I don't know about other Goths, but I mourned Kate in my own way. For starters, I don't sleep in my casket anymore. The night after Kate's funeral I was getting ready for bed and it suddenly hit me that she was going to be in a casket for all eternity. I spent most of the night sobbing and in the morning I packed away my funeral gown and the casket in a corner of my apartment and went out and bought my first 'real' bed. I didn't get rid of the casket. Sort of figured that I'd need it eventually and waste not want not. 

I'll admit that I was horrible to Elizabeth that first time. I barely acknowledged her when Tony introduced us. I remember he had a wary look in his eyes as if he felt guilty at being caught being friends with this...this usurper. At the time I was thinking that he was right to feel guilty or embarrassed. Kate had been a good friend to him. How dare he make friends with a replacement? But then, that's Tony all over. He just can't help turning on the charm. Murder suspects, witnesses, the lady who takes his order at the coffee shop, he just can't help himself. So I suppose I shouldn't have blamed him for doing the same thing with Elizabeth. The day DiNozzo doesn't flirt with a woman is the day we'll be putting him in his coffin, boxer shorts and all. 

Tony caught up with me that day as I was heading for the elevators. I just want to say that I didn't storm out in a huff. I left my report on Gibbs desk and was heading back to my lab when Tony joined me in the elevator. He didn't read me the riot act or anything for being rude, that's not Tony's style. And he wasn't tactless enough to ask me why I'd been rude. He just said, "I miss Kate too, Abbs." 

"It didn't look like it from where I was standing," I'm not usually that snappy, but it burned my blood the way he was behaving. How could he have moved on so quickly? It was only six months. "Kate's rotting in the ground right now and you're behaving like she never existed!"

"No I'm not. I wake up every morning wishing she wasn't dead," he snapped back at me, then he sighed heavily, "But wishing isn't gonna make it so, and neither is being mean to people just because they're not her."

"You've changed your tune," I told him. "What happened to the guy who was determined to keep it just Gibbs and him?"

"Maybe he realized that it's easier to watch Gibbs's back when somebody's watching his. Look Abby, I think Elizabeth is a keeper and I'm hoping Gibbs will think so too. I can't make you like her as well, but please, just give her a chance. For me."

He looked at me with those big puppy dog eyes of his, but I wasn't about to promise him anything, least of all that. 

I knew why I was behaving the way I was. If I accepted a replacement for Kate onto the team then it'd be like accepting for good that she wasn't coming back. Or at least that's what I'd been told in an online chat room. But right or wrong, I wasn't ready to move on, no matter what anybody said. And boy, people had plenty to say to me. First Tony. Then Gibbs showed up with his usual bribe of Caff Pow. He didn't order me to like Elizabeth, he just told me that for as long as she was working on his team, then he wanted me to treat her as part of the team. "If she quits because of me riding her hard that's one thing," he told me. "But I don't want anybody else getting black marks on their files because they can't be civil to one another, okay?"

I just sat there numb, thinking that I was the only person left who cared about Kate. 

If it hadn't been for Ducky, I'd have probably never given Elizabeth a chance. He can be very sneaky when he wants to be. I'd agreed to have lunch with him one day after much persuasion. Not that I didn't want to have lunch with him, but those days I just tended to eat at my desk while running and rerunning computer simulations relating to Kate's death. I'd done the usual simulations in those first few terrible days after Kate was shot. You know, figuring out exactly where the shooter had been. I'd examined all the evidence, read through Tony's and Gibbs statements, and figured out exactly where they'd all been when Kate had died. And then I reran the simulation a hundred times to see if maybe something could have altered the outcome. If the wind had been blowing from a different direction or at a different speed. If maybe it had taken Gibbs and Tony a fraction of a second longer to pick Kate up from the ground. If Ari had sneezed at the wrong time, would he have missed Kate altogether. So many variables and so many outcomes. In some of them he missed Kate by a whisker...in others he managed to not only hit Kate, but also Tony. In the absolute worst one of all, the bullet hit all three of them...I deleted that result immediately, but in the back of my mind I could see it as clearly as if I'd been there.

Ducky however wouldn't take no for an answer and insisted on dragging me off to this wonderful little coffee shop that he said he'd just discovered. I should have known something was up, but it wasn't until we got inside and I saw Elizabeth sitting at a table that I knew I'd been set up. By the look on her face, she hadn't been expecting me either, but she smiled quickly as Ducky sat down between the two of us saying "Ah, the only thing better than lunch with a beautiful woman, is lunch with two beautiful women."

I figured that at least I'd get a free lunch out of it so I sat down as well, thinking that at least with Ducky around then there wouldn't be any problem with making conversation. Of course Ducky had other ideas and no sooner than the waitress had taken our order than he got a convenient page and had to go back to NCIS. He insisted that we stay and finish our lunch. "And please ladies, no bloodshed. I really do want to be able to come back here again."

So we were there looking at each other in silence until the food came. And Elizabeth said, "Shall we eat first? I hate to fight on an empty stomach."

"Whatever." In the back of my mind I was thinking up all sorts of revenge scenarios for Ducky for putting me in this situation. Elizabeth was the last person I wanted to have to spend my lunch break with...no, make that the second last, although she barely ranked higher than Ari on that list. 

It would be easy to say "Oh yes, we talked and we bonded and sorted out our differences and became friends and we all lived happily ever after" but life isn't usually that simple, and although Elizabeth was making the effort I still wasn't really ready.  
Kate's death had hit me like somebody ripping out a piercing. And every time the skin was growing back, I'd see a new agent brought in as a replacement and it was like being ripped open all over again. 

Don't ask me how it happened, but I found myself telling Elizabeth all this over our lunch. "Scars don't heal if you keep picking at them," she told me. "Sooner or later you have to let go." I was about to snap at her when she continued, "But nobody has the right to tell you when it's time for that to happen. Abby, I'm not trying to take her place; I'm just trying to do my job. And it'd be a lot easier if we could at least be...I'm not asking you to be my best friend or anything, but I'd like to be able to work with you as two professionals."

I wanted to keep on hating her. But I knew in my heart that if Kate were around then she'd be the first person telling me what an idiot I was being. Of course if she was still around then this whole situation would never have arisen.

So I gave Elizabeth her chance, guess I wasn't the only one willing to give her a chance because just over a year to the day after Kate's death, she was part of Gibbs team when they took Ari down and Ducky sent me a boxful of bullets that he'd extracted from the body. He'd marked down the one which he'd figured was the actual cause of death, and somehow I wasn't surprised to find that it matched to Elizabeth's gun.

Plus I got a cool new trajectory analysis out of it to use as my new screensaver. Something about watching all the bullets hit the Ari sim on my screen was nice and soothing. So yeah, I was pretty glad that Elizabeth had stuck around.

-------------------------

To be continued 


	5. Gibbs second thoughts

Title:Successor part 5 Author: Ceindreadh Email: Website: n/a Permission to archive: Yes to WWOMB, anybody else, ask first.  
Fandom(s): NCIS Genre (general, hetero or slash) Gen Pairing/Characters: n/a Rating: FRT 13 Summary: Post fic to Twilight. Life goes on.  
Warnings: None Disclaimer. I don't own the NCIS characters - only Elizabeth - I'm only borrowing them, and I promise to return them in minty fresh condition when I'm finished.

-------------------------

Successor - part 05 Gibbs's second thoughts

-----------------------

Even though I'd more or less acknowledged the fact that Elizabeth was going to be sticking around for longer than a week, it still took a while before I treated her as a fully-fledged agent. The instinct to protect her as much as possible was strong in my mind and it was almost a month before I allowed her in the field. I would have kept her on desk duties indefinitely if she hadn't confronted me about it one day.

"Boss." She was starting to pick up some of DiNozzo's habits. Fortunately none of the more annoying ones, but I admit it felt good to hear another voice calling me 'Boss'. Anyway, I'd just gotten back from a meeting with Director Morrow and was ready to head out to a crime scene when Elizabeth blocked my way. "Boss, isn't it about time you started taking me with you and Tony?" There was a dangerous look in her eyes. The same look she tended to get when Tony was pushing things a bit too far.

I'd seen it only the other day when DiNozzo was trying to get her to type up a report for him. He'd found out that she was able to touch type and was trying to play on her team spirit by insisting that they share the workload. "Oh come on Elizabeth," he had said coaxingly. "You'll get this typed up in half the time. Pleeeeese." He had his back to me as I approached from the elevator so I couldn't see whether he was trying the lost puppy expression. It had never really worked on Kate, and I could see that Elizabeth was pretty immune to it as well. "Tell you what, you type up my report...and I'll show you my scars." Her response was to say, "Tell you what Tony, you type up your own report and I won't make you any new ones." Then she shot him that look and he backed away so quickly that he nearly bumped into me and narrowly avoided wearing my coffee.

But I was made of sterner stuff than DiNozzo and was immune to that sort of non-verbal aggression. Heck, I was a master of it myself and not about to be intimidated by a virtual novice who would have had to stand on tiptoes to even look me in the eye. "Special Agent Faulkner, what makes you think you're ready to work in the field?"

"Uh, four years working as a field agent before I transferred here, that's what. Boss, I'm not some wet behind the ears probationer who can't even take the safety off her gun. I've worked in the field before, I can handle it."

I knew that she was right. Her record spoke for itself, and if that wasn't vocal enough I also had DiNozzo on my back about getting Elizabeth out in the field. Practically every case we worked he was making snarky comments about how we'd have processed a scene or finished interviewing suspects a hell of a lot quicker if there were three of us doing it rather than two. The annoying thing was that he was right. And to be honest, there was no real reason for not having Elizabeth in the field. Only my desire to keep her out of harms way as much as possible. 

But since I had more or less accepted the fact that she was going to stick around, at least for the foreseeable future, it would have been unfair of me to restrict her to paperwork that could be done by any agent only half as qualified as her. Okay, I had no problem with being unfair if it kept her safe. But as she reminded me, she was an N.C.I.S. agent who'd plenty of experience with fieldwork.

So I decided I'd let her work outside the office. But while I couldn't guarantee that I'd be able to protect her from Ari, I figured that I'd at least make sure she could handle herself against the rest of the lowlife perps we came up against. 

Her shooting skills were good, not excellent by any means, but she had a high average on the firing range and practiced regularly. I'd kept myself apprised of her scores and noticed that on days when she'd had a run in with DiNozzo, her groupings tended to be considerably lower down the target body than was recommended. But hey, any guy she shot like that clearly wasn't going to pose much of a threat afterwards. 

So the only thing left was to see could she handle herself in a combat situation. "Okay then. Fifteen hundred hours in the gym. I'll take you through some close quarters combat training. You perform to my standards and I'll take you out on the next case we get. Okay?"

"Of course." She walked away and I was sure I heard her say a muffled "YES!" as she got back to her desk.

I knew she wasn't going to be quite so happy after I'd finished with her. Now I was brought up to respect women. I have never laid my hand on a woman in anger...unless she was shooting at me or something. But I had no intention of treating Elizabeth like cut glass just because she was female. If she got into a struggle with a suspect, they weren't going to go easy on her because she was a woman, and neither would I.

Tony was there watching as I threw Elizabeth to the ground for what must have been the fifth or sixth time. All credit to her, she didn't complain or kick up a fuss, just picked herself up and came at me again. "You're not trying, Special Agent Faulkner," I snapped at her, trying to make her lose control. "Keep dancing around like that and you might make a suspect so dizzy he'll fall over, but that's the only way you'll beat him." I jabbed at her with my fist and watched as she ducked out of the way, but instead of attacking, she just kept out of my reach. "Dammit, try attacking for a change. Stop holding back." I knew from her record that Elizabeth had CQC training but she wasn't showing much signs of it. 

"Hey," she snapped back at me, "I just don't want to hurt you and make you mad is all."

Okay, that made me stop in my tracks and laugh. "I promise you Elizabeth, that even if you did manage to hurt me, I will not get mad or take it personally. Okay?"

"Um, okay..."

"Right, now that we've got that out of the way, attack me."

"Shouldn't we have some ground rules or something?"

Now I was starting to get annoyed, "Rules? This is a combat situation, there are no rul..." And that's when she kicked me in the groin. 

I have to admit, that it was a well-aimed kick, and if it hadn't been for my protective cup then she could have done some serious damage. But she'd kicked hard enough to make me sink to my knees and for a few seconds the gym was spinning around me.

I could hear Elizabeth saying to DiNozzo, in a voice tinged with a little panic, "He did say he wouldn't get mad, right? And there weren't any rules."

Then DiNozzo's voice replying, "Technically he just said rul...and then he groaned, but I'm pretty sure that's what he meant"  
I felt DiNozzo's hand on my back, "Uh Boss, you want me to get an ice pack or something?"

I shook my head and then heard Elizabeth's voice again. "If I start running now, how far do you think I'd get before he caught me?"

"Ooh, I don't know. Gibbs can run pretty fast for a guy his age. Hey look, he's standing up. Guess we'll find out!"

"You don't have to start running," I growled as I climbed unsteadily to my feet. DiNozzo was looking at me, his expression half amused, half sympathetic. Elizabeth on the other hand was half worried, and half defiant. 

"Boss, I'm sorry about that. But you did say..."

"Yeah Boss," chimed in Tony. "And you have to admit, she really got you. Mind you, she'd never have taken me by surprise like that. I mean, I've seen that movie a hundred times."

"Movie?" I probably should have known what he was talking about, but I was still in pain, okay.

"Butch Cassidy and the Sundance kid. See Butch is about to have a knife fight with one of his team and he asks are there any rules."

Elizabeth chimed in, "And the guy starts to say that there aren't any." Oh great, I thought, another movie buff.

"And that's when Butch gets him where it hurts." DiNozzo turned to Elizabeth. "I just love that movie."

"Yeah, 'you fool, the fall's gonna kill you."

"When you've quite finished," I interrupted. They fell silent and looked at me. "We still have another fifteen minutes to go."

"You want to keep going, Boss?" said Tony. "Shouldn't you be taking it easy for a bit?"

"I should," I said, and I just know that I had an evil grin on my face as I clapped DiNozzo on the back. "That's why you are going to do the next fifteen minutes."

I have to admit, that it was almost worth the pain to see the petrified look that appeared on DiNozzo's face. Not to mention the evil grin that showed up on Elizabeth's. Funny how she seemed to have no qualms about attacking Tony in a practice session. She still ended up flat on her back more often than not, but she was able to react quickly and on a few occasions had managed to sweep Tony's legs out from under him before he could stop her. And once or twice, she even managed to keep on her feet while knocking him to the ground. On those occasions she faked a quick kick to the groin while not making contact, telling me that that would be her cue to and I'm quoting her, "run like hell"

So all in all, I was a lot happier about the prospect of letting Elizabeth out of the office. I knew that should Ari come after us again that there'd be little enough I could do about it, but at least she was as well prepared as I could make her for dealing with other dangerous elements.

Tony was delighted to have her out in the field, and on several occasions I even let them out without my supervision. They worked well together and seemed to get on fine. 

Which is why it was such a surprise when Tony stopped by my desk after coming back from a case and said that he wanted Elizabeth off our team.

---------------------

To be continued.

Ceindreadh 


	6. Tony's second thoughts

Title:Successor part 6 Author: Ceindreadh Email: Website: n/a Permission to archive: Yes to WWOMB, anybody else ask me first. Fandom(s): NCIS Genre (general, hetero or slash) Gen Pairing/Characters: n/a Rating: FRT 13 Summary: Post fic to Twilight. Life goes on.  
Warnings: None Disclaimer. I don't own the NCIS characters - only Elizabeth - I'm only borrowing them, and I promise to return them in minty fresh condition when I'm finished.

-------------------------

Successor - part 06 Tony's second thoughts

-----------------------

I learned a lot of things about Elizabeth in a short space of time. One, she's seen almost as many movies as I have, although the people in the movies she watches tend to have more clothes on than in the ones I watch. She can play up to four games of chess simultaneously. Note that I didn't say she can win any of them. I lost fifty bucks to her over that little mistake of mine. Although by the time she'd paid off her co-conspirators who had helped set me up, she probably didn't have much of the fifty left. But to her it was the principle of the thing. 

She also didn't bluff. Now I'd like to be able to say that I learned that about her during a game of strip poker with her and Abby, but the truth was a little more embarrassing.

Gibbs had sent the pair of us off to follow up on a lead, which turned out to be a dead end. We'd had to drive about fifty miles to get there, only to find that the guy we were supposed to interview had died about a week earlier. There weren't even any suspicious circumstances for us to follow up on, so all we could do was hop back in the car and head back to Washington. Neither of us were particularly happy about it, and I was even less happy about the fact that Gibbs had given Elizabeth the keys to the car. He hadn't let me do any driving for over a week, ever since the incident with me, a pretty pedestrian walking past, and a couple of hundred dollars worth of damage when I'd backed into a wall. I'd tried to tell him it hadn't been my fault, I mean when a woman wears a low cut top with breasts as big as hers...but anyway, it was one thing Gibbs doing the driving instead of me, it was another thing when it was Elizabeth. At least with Gibbs you knew you'd get where you were going quickly enough.

I'd tried coaxing Elizabeth into at least letting me drive on the journey back. Pointing out to her that she'd already done enough driving for the day and trying to make out like I was doing her a favor by taking over. She didn't fall for it and just told me to shut up and put my seat belt on. 

Okay, let me get this clear. I do not have a problem with women drivers. Some of my best friends are women...who drive. But what bugged me about Elizabeth was that she was just so...so damned cautious behind the wheel. She never broke the speed limit...not by more than a few miles an hour. She always waited until a road was well clear before crossing a junction. Heck, she even slowed down at an amber light instead of speeding up to get through before it turned red. 

So we were on a good road and Elizabeth was being her usual careful slow self, and I was getting more and more frustrated and so I started commenting on how she really could speed up a bit because everybody else was passing us out and if she didn't hurry then we'd just get stuck in rush hour traffic and hey she could overtaken that car if she'd just put her foot down and now there was a line of oncoming traffic and we'd be stuck behind somebody driving even slower than her for ages now. I must have gone too far because she growled at me that if I made one more comment about her driving then I was going to have to walk back to the office. And that shut me up...for all of five minutes.

I didn't even say anything really bad about her driving...honest. It was just something along the lines of how the car really wouldn't fall apart if she went over the speed limit for a while. And that was it. She pulled into the side of the road and slammed on the brakes. "Okay DiNozzo, that's it. Get the hell out of the car." 

I started to laugh, but it sort of died away as I saw the look on her face. "Aw come on Elizabeth, I was only kidding."

"Get...out...of...the car before I do something I'll regret." I could see by her face that she wasn't messing around, so I quickly unlocked the door and scrambled out, thinking that she was just bluffing, she wasn't really going to make me walk all the way back. And then just as soon as I'd shut the door, she revved up the engine and was gone, leaving me staring after her in disbelief.

Did I mention already that she has a bit of a short temper when she's driving? It's probably about the only time I hear her swear so much in such a short space of time. To listen to her you'd think that she's the only driver who obeys the rules of the road. Mind you, she's probably right. But anyway, she certainly looked as if she was obeying the rules of the road as she drove off and rounded the corner a few hundred yards away.

For a few minutes all I could do was stand there watching, waiting for her to change her mind and stop the car. Then I figured she'd have gone too far to just stop and reverse and was trying to find a safe place to turn around. Then I figured that she wasn't bluffing and I'd have a long walk ahead of me. I tried phoning her, but she didn't answer. Of course that was probably more down to her not wanting to answer the mobile while driving and not so much that she was pissed at me. Then I remembered that she had a hands free set and I figured that it was because she was pissed at me.

So I thought about my options. Sit around here and wait for Elizabeth to change her mind and come back for me. I somehow figured that hell would freeze over before she'd do that. Maybe try and hitch a ride with some gorgeous blonde...only the traffic seemed to have died down considerably over the last few miles and I could be waiting a long while for that to happen. So I went for option three and started walking. I knew there was a town only a few miles down the road so I figured I'd be able to pick up a bus or hire a car there. 

Of course just my luck, it started to pour down rain only a few minutes later. I pulled my jacket up around my ears and trudged miserably on. I guess my luck wasn't too bad though, because when I rounded the corner, the car had been pulled in to the side of the road and Elizabeth was sitting in it and waiting for me.

I admit that I was half expecting her to wait until I got up close to the car and then drive off again...okay, that's more like something that I'd do. But she probably felt that she'd taught me enough of a lesson...or maybe she just figured that it wasn't worth while the explaining she'd have to do to Gibbs if she did return to the office without me. The paperwork alone would be a bitch. Anyway, I tell you, she let me back in the car and zoomed off without a word and let me tell you that I kept my mouth shut for the rest of that journey. Although I admit a part of me was wondering just what would happen if she was driving with Gibbs as a passenger and I couldn't wait until that happened.

But for the most part Elizabeth and I got on pretty well. The more we worked together, the more I trusted her to watch my back, and more importantly, to watch Gibbs's back. And I was really glad that Gibbs hadn't made any noises about transferring her again, and then came a day when everything changed.

--------------------------

It was an ordinary investigation on an ordinary day. I don't even remember what the case was about now, some thefts or something. I just remember that we'd got a tip that a certain warehouse might be where our bad guys were hiding some of their loot. Elizabeth had wanted to call for backup, but I pulled rank on her, telling her that our source wasn't the most reliable, and that Gibbs wouldn't be terribly happy about us calling in reinforcements if the place was deserted. As it happened, I was right, but I wished later on that I'd listened to Elizabeth and hadn't insisted that we go in, take a quick look around and then decide whether we needed back up.

So we went in, and it didn't take us too long to realize that our source had been lying through his teeth. The place looked as if he hadn't been used since Gibbs was in the marines. To be fair, I didn't say "told you so" to Elizabeth, and to her credit she didn't slate me for believing an unreliable source. She did however insist that we check every area of the warehouse before reporting in.

"Just cause it looks deserted doesn't mean it is," she told me. "Where better to stash stolen property than somewhere that looks as if nobody's been here for years, right?"

I went along with her suggestion and not just because it meant climbing all sorts of ladders and things to check the upper levels. Being the gentleman I am, naturally I let her go first. Being the lady she was, she only threatened to poke one of my eyes out if I stared too much.

We'd checked most of the ground floor and were making our way along some walkways to get to an upper level, when we saw him. Now he could have been just some bum who'd wandered in from off the street to get a bit of shelter, or he could have been the perp we were looking for. He was too far away to tell. But one thing we could tell was that when he saw us he started running, and naturally we ran after him. 

The warehouse had been abandoned for a long time, I know that now for a fact, but then all I knew was that I just needed to run a little faster and maybe I could catch the guy. I could hear the metal walkway groaning beneath me as I ran, Elizabeth was about ten or fifteen feet behind me. I remember that I'd glanced back to see if she was keeping up with us. And then, only a fraction of a second after I'd turned my head away, I heard the sickening crash of twisted metal coming from behind me, and when I looked back...she was gone.

Just like that...as quickly as between one breath and the next. I skidded to a halt and looked at the gaping hole behind me where the walkway had been only a few seconds before as I'd pounded across it. For an instant it was as if all the sound had been sucked out of the universe and there was just me and my heart pounding. And I felt sick to my stomach in a way I hadn't felt since that day on the rooftop when Kate had been shot, only this time was worse, because this time it was my fault. Elizabeth had been my responsibility...I was the senior member of the team and I should have been looking out for her...and I'd failed her...and I suddenly knew just how Gibbs had felt when Kate had died, and why he'd been so adamant about not having a team around him...because when they died and you were to blame, the guilt was unbearable.

I found myself on my knees, still staring at the gap and Elizabeth's name on my lips. 

And then it was like somebody flicked off the mute button and I could hear the creaking of the walkways and above it I could hear a voice calling...no, make that yelling my name.

"Tony!"

"Elizabeth," I gasped, hardly able to believe it as I slid forward on my hands and knees until I was able to look down into the gap. About four or five feet down, I could see Elizabeth's face, white as a sheet, staring up at me, as she clung like a limpet to what had been the floor of the walkway.

"Tony!" she yelled again, even as I reached down and yelled at her to grab my hand. But she was too far down and my hand dangled uselessly in the air as she tried to reach it. Letting go of her grip, even with one hand, had been a bad idea and she slid a little further down. 

"Hold on," I yelled at her and rolled back out of the way, pulling frantically at my belt. Finally I had it in my hands and slid the end through the buckle to create a loop. Then I lowered it down towards Elizabeth, yelling at her to grab the loop and I'd pull her up. Even I as leaned towards her, I could felt the metal I was lying on start to dip a bit and I knew that if I didn't hurry then we'd both end up in a broken heap on the floor. 

So I reached down as far as I could with the belt and Elizabeth grabbed the loop and as soon as I saw that she had a firm grip, I started pulling, and then said a silent prayer of thanks that I'd worn my good quality hand made genuine Italian leather belt that day instead of the cheap and nasty plastic imitation leather one that I often wore. 

It seemed to take forever as I pulled and Elizabeth climbed, but finally she was close enough for me to grab her by the hand and half pull, half drag her onto the walkway. I had my arms wrapped around her and was telling her "It's okay, it's okay. I've got you." 

She was shaking like a leaf and saying "Oh shit, oh shit," over and over again. I don't know how long she was like that before she made some comment along the lines of "If you make any comments about my weight..." Except she was still gasping for breath so it didn't come out quite as smoothly as that, and I could see unshed tears in her eyes as her breathing started to calm down a bit. 

So we were sitting like that for I don't know how long, and then we felt the walkway underneath us start to creak and groan and so we sort of scrambled over to where it joined the wall, figuring it'd be a bit more stable. And I'm still holding Elizabeth, and she's still shaking, and now I'm shaking as well, cause all I can think of was how this was all my fault and if she hadn't been able to grab a handhold then she'd be lying on the floor below as dead as Kate was. 

And I knew then exactly where Gibbs was coming from...how the guilt cut like a knife right through you...and how you'd do anything to avoid feeling it again.

So we finally managed to get to our feet and climbed down to ground level, and neither of us making any jokes about looking in the wrong places. Heck, neither of us were saying anything much at all. Elizabeth just curled up in the passenger seat, staring out the window. I was barely able to keep us on the road, my hands were still shaking. 

Once back at NCIS, I pulled rank and told Elizabeth to get Ducky to check her over while I reported to Gibbs. I could tell that she was still shaken by the incident, because she didn't even raise a token protest. Normally she'd buck any attempt by me to play the senior agent card, mainly because she'd been a field agent as long as I had, but today she just did as she was told.

And then I went straight to Gibbs and told him that I wanted Elizabeth off the team and now.

Gibbs just sort of looked at me and said; "An NCIS agent is for life, not just for Christmas. What the hell happened? She jump on your hat again?"

I tried to explain to Gibbs just why I'd changed my mind about Elizabeth but I could tell I wasn't making much sense, and I guess he figured that something was up, because he told me to grab my coat and we headed out for a nearby bar, somewhere where we could talk without being overheard. And I just kept babbling on about how he was right and I'd been wrong and the sooner Elizabeth was somebody else's responsibility the better, and how I didn't want her to end up like Kate and for the first time since Kate's death we were talking...I mean, really talking.

I know that we'd talked about Kate before, at her wake we'd all drunk toasts in her honor and told stories about her life until late in the night, but never before had we talked about her death, and how it had affected us. And I told Gibbs about how the smell of blood made me sick and he told me how he hadn't worked on his boat since that day, and Ducky joined us later on and he'd been hurting as well but like the rest of us he hadn't been able to talk about it. 

And it was nearly closing time when Gibbs finally said, "Look, if you really want Elizabeth off the team, then I can put the paperwork through in the morning. But a guy told me once that danger is part of the job we do and we can't keep looking over our shoulders, and worrying that people we care about and work with are going to get hurt. And he also said that we can't blame ourselves when they do get hurt. It goes with the territory DiNozzo and we have to get used to it."

Man, I hate it when he twists something I've said back on me. I hate it even more when he's right. And I knew he was right and that if I asked Elizabeth then she'd say it had been her responsibility to look out for herself and besides, she'd had my back not the other way round. 

So Gibbs never filed the paperwork, and Elizabeth stuck around, and when we stood shoulder to shoulder and took down Ari, I knew that we were almost a team again. And when McGee's computer task force gig was finished and he wangled a transfer back to Gibbs's team, that only sealed the deal.

---------------------

Ceindreadh 


End file.
